Surviving Adversity

Shop Fire Won't Hold Refugee Back

December 15, 1989|By CHRIS OSHER Staff Writer

It will take more than a fire to roust Doan Than from his shoe repair shop in Suffolk.

The 41-year-old refugee from Vietnam says that if he can survive the rigors of a Communist concentration camp, he can certainly survive whatever misfortune fate might throw his way in the United States.

On Nov. 23, misfortune did come his way. A fire broke out in the building where his business is located. Than was afraid the fire would claim his customers' shoes and his equipment. But the fire department arrived and extinguished the fire before it could cause serious damage.

"That fire hurt me a little bit," Than says. "I worried at first, but an hour later I was figuring out how to solve the problem."

He remembers telling astonished onlookers that he would be open the next day. True to his word, he could be seen the next day waving to customers from the sidewalk in front of his shop at 258 West Washington St. He moved his equipment outside and worked on the shoes there.

In late November, Than moved back into his shop, and he says business is better than ever because of the approaching Christmas season.

Than says it was the second time fire had threatened his business. The first time was in 1987, and it claimed three machines and forced him to work out of a van for three months.

When Than first moved to the United States in 1986, he didn't think he would be able to make a living repairing shoes. He was used to life in Vietnam, where the people usually wear slippers instead of shoes. He was surprised to discover that in the United States his customers sometimes would bring as many as 20 pairs of shoes to his shop at once.

Than learned how to repair shoes from his father who crafted them from hand in Vietnam. As a youngster, Than shunned his father's craft in favor of going to school. He had high aspirations, but during his second year of college he had to enlist in the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese Air Force.

When the United States pulled out of Vietnam, the Communists put him in a concentration camp, Than says.

"They tried to indoctrinate me," he says. "They tried to tell me how great the Communists were, but no way, I would just pretend. Always in my heart I plotted of ways to escape."

He says he had to capture and eat snakes, toads and rats to survive. Often, he considered suicide during his six years of captivity, but older and wiser men convinced him not to.

He eventually escaped from the camp, crawling under a barbed wire fence one night and hiding out in the jungle until he could find his family. When he faces adversity now, he looks back on his past and realizes he can survive.

"I am used to hard times, so when I see a fire I think, `I didn't die in concentration camp so no way I die now," he says.